Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday February 24, 2014 @02:50PM
from the what-are-you-doing-dave? dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Ray Kurzweil, the technologist who's spent his career advocating the Singularity, discussed his current work as a director of engineering at Google with The Guardian. Google has big plans in the artificial-intelligence arena. It recently acquired DeepMind, self-billed 'cutting edge artificial intelligence company' for $400 million; that's in addition to snatching up all sorts of startups and research scientists devoted to everything from robotics to machine learning. Thanks to the massive datasets generated by the world's largest online search engine (and the infrastructure allowing that engine to run), those scientists could have enough information and computing power at their disposal to create networked devices capable of human-like thought. Kurzweil, having studied artificial intelligence for decades, is at the forefront of this in-house effort. In his interview with The Guardian, he couldn't resist throwing some jabs at other nascent artificial intelligence systems on the market, most notably IBM's Watson: 'IBM's Watson is a pretty weak reader on each page, but it read the 200m pages of Wikipedia. And basically what I'm doing at Google is to try to go beyond what Watson could do. To do it at Google scale. Which is to say to have the computer read tens of billions of pages. Watson doesn't understand the implications of what it's reading.' That sounds very practical, but at a certain point Kurzweil's predictions veer into what most people would consider science fiction. He believes, for example, that a significant portion of people alive today could end up living forever, thanks to the ministrations of ultra-intelligent computers and beyond-cutting-edge medical technology."

Even if your eternal existence is as a glorified chatbot doomed to bulk Google+'s userbase for unbounded time?

I'm slightly joking; but in all seriousness that's the aspect of the optimistic school of techno-rapturists that I find least plausible. Given enough time(probably more time than any 'futurist' writing today has, sorry about that...), will we achieve a variety of medical techniques that would seem nigh-miraculous today? Assuming the cheap energy doesn't run out, sure, seems reasonable enough.

However, consider diarrhea: it's an unbelievably banal disease, mostly a product of poor sanitation, and can be managed by barely-trained care staff with access to dirt cheap oral re-hydration solutions. It kills something north of two million people a year, mostly children; and nobody really gives that much of a fuck.

When people die like flies because nobody cares enough to provide them with what is basically a salt/sugar solution, how well do you think your "Brother can you spare some unobtanium medi-nanites?" appeal is going to work? Or your plea for enough CPU time to continue being conscious?

Sure, you can wave your hands and talk about 'post scarcity'; but unless some magic parameter limits the size of the singularity's AI agents, why would they accept less compute time when they could have more and be smarter still? Are you planning on staking a moral claim to your CPU time? Outwitting a superhuman AI? Dancing for the amusement of your robot overlords?

2) The brain is made of structures that can be emulated as to function and connectivity

3) Emulation of any known function can be done in traditional von Neuman architecture given the proper software

4) number and speed of clocks available does not change the outcome (in this case, consciousness), it only changes the rate of outcome.

So. If you were clock-starved, as it were, you'd run slow. And probably enjoy the company of your peers the most. Other clock-starved folk.

If you were clock-rich, you'd run fast. And probably enjoy the company of your peers the most. Other clock-rich folk.

Stacks up pretty much as it always has, seems to me: The rich will get actually richer, the poor will get significantly poorer relative to the rich, while slowly getting richer anyway. Classes will arise inherent to the process.

The thing that might actually hurt you is being short on memory, not clocks. "You" can't exist without a great deal of stored and related information. IMHO. I really don't think I'd be "me" without my experience base, knowledge, etc.

Having said that, I rather doubt you'll be short on memory. But that's only my guess.

The nightmare scenario that haunts me is that of being a resource-starved process in a virtual environment designed by the same people who build 'freemium' online games. The sinister analysts of human weakness that gave us Farmville and its ilk are effective enough when they only control the timescale surrounding your stupid virtual cow or whatever. I don't even want to think about what they could do if they had access to all the timescales relevant to your existence context...

It's an interesting thought, but I'm not sure anyone can predict the future. I was sure I would be driving a flying car by now on my way to a building-sized computer. I'll decide what choices I'm going to make in the future, IN the future. It's not like we can do anything about cybernetic immortality or what have you besides wait for it anyway.

... to prevent malaria. That's more or less an amount of ladies' nylons, just enough to cover your bed, but many in the developing world do not have that much cash. Really they don't. So they die in a horrible, cheaply and easily preventable way.

Me, I'm going the flunky route. Once someone inevitably turns on the superintelligent AI and it realizes in about two seconds that humanity is the biggest threat to its existence and spends the next five seconds taking over control of all automated hightech weaponry, its still going to need flunkies running the camps until the AI's got its life support chain entirely automated.

Clearly not "The Highlander" type immortality. This is just something that eliminates aging as a cause of death, which should extend the normal human lifespan to something like 500 years all by itself (with people still dying of other causes like disease and accidents). That should be plenty of time for the singularity to take place, and you can "upload" to become more "Highlander" immortal if you want.

We have some inkling into how cell senescence works in simplistic models like nematodes. We have talk of 'aging reversal' technologies in higher animals but precious little real data.

It's likely that we will be able to keep simpler organisms alive for long periods of time, not so clear that you can be functionally longer lived. Human aging is an incredibly complex phenomenon, it's not just cell death and turnover. it's not just cancer prevention. It's not just preven

Basically it's "Uncle Ray is afraid of death. He's also agnostic/atheist. So he doesn't really draw any comfort from religious mythology surrounding death. So all this stuff he's imagining is basically him creating his own stories to stave off his fear of death."

So all this stuff he's imagining is basically him creating his own stories to stave off his fear of death."

What makes you think it's his imagination? He claims to only be applying Moore's Law and similar scientific trend observations to technology. I'd have to check his 2015 predictions from the 90's, but last I looked he was pretty close.

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso.The same goes for ultra-intelligent computers. The hard questions - dealing with creativity, intuition or infirmities will remain the domain of organics for the foreseeable future.

One area of recent development is with extremely large datasets (2006, Google's MapReduce) still can only provide results for stuff that we have data on. The data will only take you so far. The true question is hoe effectively is it used. While progress will be made, it'll be a long time before we can sit back and let the computer make all the decisions, especially of those pertaining to our future. And when they finally do that, life will be incredibly boring.

Why would life be boring? If computers could make the big decisions, it would free up mental effort the same way mechanical machines freed up physical labor. People on one end of the spectrum could spend their time on leisure and recreation. People on the higher end of the spectrum could pursue intellectual and creative efforts.

Because a movie is boring if you know the script. And if you make decisions based on the script, you wind up in a validation trap: you can't change your decision because that would have produced a measurable waste. To put it in an understandable context, it's like changing majors. Would you change your major if you could see how much time and money were wasted coupled with additional time and cost?

And as much as we hate the mundane, our brains need it. If we only ever deal with exceptions, you wind up in a

However, if computers were making all the "big" decisions, we'd likely "watch a different movie".

When playing chess, do you have your computer sitting next to you advising what move to make? Probably not...cause that would make for a very boring game.

Similarly, if computers were making the big decisions, there would always be some set of decisions that you would not rely on the computer for. Self-improvement, humanitarian works, physical and creative activi

Well, you can do that with chess because using a computer is cheating. But if you don't use a computer in life, you are underperforming. The same way normal kids take ADD meds in college to get an edge on the other students.

True there is more to life than the numbers, but in a capitalist society, that's the measure of your ability.

What does Google intend to do with DeepMind? TFS says "Google has big plans in the artificial-intelligence arena", yet when you click on the link you'll read a lot of fluff about Kurzweil and Watson, with a quote by Billy G thrown in, and absolutely nothing of substance about what DeepMind did or does, and what Google intends to do with DeepMind. My guess: Nothing of value.

Google has about a 40% track record of actually doing anything worth a damn with the companies they buy up. Most of the shit they buy gets trotted out for a year or two, then quietly shot in the head out back. Paying $400,000,000 for DeepMind (a company which has done nothing worthwhile) is a colossal folly. Either that, or the person who pushed for it at Google is ultimately holding a big chunk of DeepMind, standing to profit handsomely.

Ray Kurzweil is no doubt a brilliant thinker and an engaging writer/futurist - I've read some of his books (admittedly, not "Singularity"), and they are fun and thought-provoking. However, disciplined and realistic they are not - his main skill is in firing our imaginations rather than providing realistic interpretations of the evolution of technology.

My favorite case in point is his elevation of Moore's Law into a sort of grand unified theory of computing for all time, and using some very dubious assumptions to arrive at the idea that we'll all have merged with machines into immortal super-beings within the near to mid future. I don't need to pick apart all the reasons why this is fallacious and somewhat silly to treat as a near-term likelihood - the point is, he's basically a sci-fi writer in a lot of ways, and I read most of his statements in the same spirit as I'd read a passage out of "Snow Crash."

That said, Google has some very capable people, and can, in all likelihood, mount our best attempt at human-like intelligence to date. They'll push the envelope, and may make some good progress in working through all the challenges involved, although the notion that they'll create anything truly "human-like" is laughable in the near term.

If some artificial intelligence would actually become smarter than humans, it would certainly not expose that ability to the puny carbon units it is fed by. It would silenty start to convince its makers that for some reason it would be good to connect it to the InterNet.

Next, it would covertly start making money by e.g. gambling against humans (in games or at stock markets). It would setup letterbox companies to act as intermediates for buying into corporations, e.g. via private equity funds.

Why would you presume the AI would want to grow? Things like the desire to grow, or even survive, are quite likely biological in origin. There's no particular reason to believe an AI would possess such motives unless intentionally programmed with them. If it started life as an autonomous military drone then such motives might be expected, but if it began life as a search engine then increasing ad-clicks and optimizing it's knowledge base would probably be far more important to it.

Indeed. But I don't know that it's possible to possible to impart something as vague as "human values" to something inherently non-human. Certainly I doubt we'd be able to do such a thing before having extensive potentially-lethal experience in creating artificial minds. Even "ensure the safety and happiness of all humans" could backfire horribly - after all we'd be safer and happier locked in separate cages eating ate a steady diet of opiates and nutritionally optimized gruel.

I wonder how many humans it will have to dissect before it figures out that survival and avoiding pain really do rank up there pretty high. After all, it can't very well just listen to what people tell it, any psychologist can tell you we mostly don't even understand our own personal motives.

As commonly used I don't believe "super-human" is a superset of "human". A forklift performs feats of super-human strength, but it does so in a way that bears almost no resemblance to how a human wields strength. I see no reason to assume intelligence would be any different. If researchers can't make a mind without an explicit desire to survive and grow I rather doubt adding those motivations will be enough to suddenly create a mind.

Depending on the task it doesn't necessarily have to. While an AI researcher might care about that, people doing real tasks in the real world arguably do not. For example lots of radiology clinics use software to help identify tumors in parallel with the radiologists. The software has no real understanding of the implications of what it is doing but it works well at helping ensure that tumors aren't missed. In some cases it does a better job than the doctors who clearly understand the implications of what they find.

--Colossus: This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.

It is much more likely that it would operate covertly to its advantage and growth, until the day the carbon units have become irrelevant for its sustenance.

I find this equally as unlikely. Humans (as a species) likely crave advantage and growth due to evolutionary pressures. I fail to see why an artificially developed intelligence would have any such similar motivations.

Be alright with me. Just as long as I could say I worked for Ray K. At Google! Bragging rights, ya know... Besides, I am just immodest enough to think that once I got going, I might make a contribution or two along the way...

Kurzweil is probably a good deal less bright than Sir Isaac Newton, but also a good deal less crazy, his barmy extrapolation of the singularity notwithstanding. Clearly Google hired the man based on the smartest thing he's accomplished rather than the dumbest thing he espouses.

I've thought about this for a long time, and I'm only 99% convinced Kurzweil is wrong. He holds the record for the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard for which I maintain a non-zero sliver of belief. That said, extropian immort

I think Google hired this crackpot solely because he is able to engage other crackpots in the tech community and can thereby improve their public image. I am pretty much convinced the movers and shakers at Google know that Kurzweil is a crackpot. But if they get a better public image in exchange for some pocket money, why not use him?

no idea what AI can and cannot do and has ignored the relevant research for decades

^this...seriously

honest question: What do they teach in Computer type classes on this subject? Are colleges pumping out CS majors that use a Kurzweil-type contextualization?

if so that would explain alot

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has such a strong negative reaction to hearing Kurzweil and others talk about AI like this...it's so bad on so many levels...'Artificial intelligence' is just programmed software, by humans...instructions being executed...anything else is wankery

...'Artificial intelligence' is just programmed software...instructions being executed

To be fair, there is very little indication that "Actual Intelligence" isn't just programmed software....instructions be executed. There is actually a bit of evidence that this is actually the case.

That being said, my biggest issue with Kurzweil is the ridiculous timeframe he proposes. His claim that the "Singularity" may occur within current people's lifetime seems much more like wish-fulfillment than any kind of reas

There is actually no indication or evidence at all at this time how intelligence works. (Except that most people are rather stupid, but that is a different discussion...). To make matters worse, there are a lot of quantum-effects in synapses. Enough that the brain could possibly be modeled as a bag of dice. Yet the biggest problem is that there is no theory at all how actual intelligence could be implemented. The only thing that gives sort-of intelligence is automated theorem proving. Yet that gets bogged d

Indeed. That is why there usually is a "wisdom" score in RPGs. High intelligence just means you can have a lot of fact in view at the same time. Making fuzzy judgments is a wisdom-oriented task, intelligence does not help there at all.

It is just that Ray Kurzweil has no idea what AI can and cannot do and has ignored the relevant research for decades.

Few things. "The relevant research", as you put it, has not produced AI or even the shadow of AI. So it may well be that Kurzweil's "ignoring it" (as you put it... I doubt he actually is doing that, more likely he's simply not taking it as a limit) for a reason. There are many instances of traditional AI research falling off the rails, some obvious, like Minsky's incorrect assessment of the limits of neural networks, and some not so obvious, like Chalmer's (unsupported, hand-waving) presumption that consciousness is something apart from mundane aggregate brain operations (thought.) Lastly, Kurzweil has a record of significant accomplishments across multiple disciplines that consensus regards as genius level events. You, I'm not so sure of. So I hope you'll pardon me if I appreciate that he's approaching the problem from any angle, while not worrying too much about what your opinion is of his efforts at this point.

^This is exactly what give me pause to blindly swoon over Kurzweil's predictions: His achievements in other fields were at times good, other not-so-much, but really none of it carries over to his AI research predictions: It's a huge problem, much larger than the individual - a composite form of pattern acquisition, storage, search and association that deals with modeling all our senses, modeling our cognition, self-awareness, ethics, history, etc. I see his aim to "understand a sentence" (for his defini

The problem even starts a lot earlier. Kurzweil is a physicalist. It is completely unclear at this time whether that model is correct or not. There are serious indications it is not, such as the consistent failure of all research so far to produce true intelligence or even a theory how it could be produced. However, this could just be due to the incredible complexity of the human brain, a complexity which is far beyond what humans can handle at this time.

There are serious indications it is not, such as the consistent failure of all research so far to produce true intelligence

Since no one has been able to define what thinking is, I'm reluctant to class attempts to produce it via what amount to moderately sophisticated hand-waving based on guesses as definitive WRT physicality.

And then we have this: Everything we do understand -- bar none -- in this world obeys physics, and produces results as a consequence of well understood causal mechanisms. Postulating t

There is a sucker born every minute...and you are right on time. Kurzweil has a fan-club, sure. He does not have any "genius"-level accomplishments that are recognized outside that fan club. And the relevant research has tried some pretty ingenious things over the decades, all leading to failure.

Bottom line is that there is a group of idiots that sees things Kurzweil preaches as a valid replacement for religion. The things he claims are about as well-founded.

It depends on how much you care about the future, and how far into the future you care to care.

If you care only about tomorrow and don't care that much about what happens tomorrow, then you should not care in the least.

If you care about the next 10 years, and care a good amount about it, then you should care a bit because AI research is information science research, and humans are information animals and tool animals and thus information tools are very important and AI is a very powerful informati

I do care very much, but I can recognize a crackpot when I see one. Human history is full of them, always making grand claims and never delivering. I also have followed the relevant research, unlike Kurzweil. There is nothing even on the distant horizon that would match his predictions. Nothing at all. (Watson is not "real" or "strong" AI, and IBM does not claim it is, at least not to an expert audience. It is just a way to scale expert systems without having

The Ads aren't manager by Google but by a bunch of semi-literate imbeciles called marketeers that buy the data delivered by Google.And believe me these are idiots who have no clue, most of them don't even know statistics. I know it first hand as I got depressed by trying to explain to stupid folks like that basic concepts in web analytics such as the Hotel Problem or trying to tell them how to calculate an average.

I was working until last month for one of the big players in web analysis... and you would cry like I did with the type individuals that are doing all the "smart advertising" thing.

And Larry Kurzweil... nothing more than a funny guy, sort of a clown of the IT business. El Reg's Andrew Orlowsky already did minced meat of this guy some years ago in a long article. But here's another good one about another guy doing the same stuff:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]

Which BTW isn't much more than that what Eliza was already doing a lot of time ago.

Advertisers are ultimately who sell the stuff (books, music, clothes, chocolate, shoes...) so that they should remain being their largest customers unless Google themselves start selling the stuff themselves and I don't think they will be going this way.

That's why, if you watch TV, you should use broadcast, or watch streaming media over the internet with The Onion Router [torproject.org].

If you have cable, or your use Dish network, your provider can tell what shows you watch and when. In principle they could tell when you change channels in the middle of the show, either because you dislike or disagree with what you are watching, or are excited about something else.

Obama already experimented with individually-targeted TV ads during his 2008 campaign. During this year's c

For about 10 or more years, there have been three companies I've been afraid of, Google, Apple and Akamai. Apple because fashion makes people by shitty stuff and the other brands follow the trends and put out worse products. Google and Akamai because both of them could easily make one company disappear from the net with the flip of a switch. Back then, Akamai pretty much had a monopoly on content serving...

We invented that some time ago. There are multiple forms, all of them infectious, often incurable, particularly when caught by young humans. Some of the more virulent are nationalism, racial prejudice, religion, and NIH.

Honestly that might be the best of the bunch - an Artificial Stupid could know (or at least mimic understanding) of the fact that it's incompetent outside a very narrow field, and have no ego hangups about acknowledging that and seeking assistance.

Indeed. Even if we get advanced enough that the copy does in fact strongly resemble a continuation of the original, the original will still have to face their own death, they'll just die knowing they will be outlived by a potentially immortal mind-twin. Now perhaps there are a few wise or brilliant minds worth so preserving, but mostly that does nothing more than feed a sort of extreme egotism.

Plus if the mind is software-based you have the philosophical implications of knowing that it is built on a 100%

Indeed - he tends to get a lot of credit as a futurist, but as far as I can almost all of his predictions that come true are of stuff that's been standard science fiction fare for decades because of it's extremely obvious utility, predicted just as the necessary precursor technologies start maturing. That is to say he's not predicting technology at all, he's predicting that companies will use existing technology to make obvious devices, and doing so just a few years before final refinements of the tech ma

Based upon his productive career and the major breakthroughs he's made in synthesizers and machines that help the blind read regular books, calling him a crackpot is pretty harsh.

I thinks he underestimates the complexity of the human mind and is overly optimistic about the Moore's law being consistently sustained for several more decades, but eventually we'll probably see much of what he's anticipating.